Five Unusual Gratitudes for Personal Growth

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I do an annual list of five unusual things to be thankful for each year during Thanksgiving week. In some cases they are my personal things – and in other cases, they are more observations of the world. In either case, I always bring the five things back around to what you can learn from them.

Last year, I borrowed from what I was seeing my clients go through. This year, let’s get personal. In no particular order, here we go:

#1 – A lull in the action.

Of course, we all need time to rest and recuperate – to rejuvenate ourselves. (I’ll talk about this later.) What I found this year during a bit of a lull in my client load was the time to THINK.

I thought about the big stuff – the direction I wanted to take my business in, long-term goals, KPI’s. I also thought about the small stuff – changes I wanted to make to programs, processes.

I came away from that time feeling more focused and determined. So much so, in fact, that I started building in 2 full days each quarter to work on items on my Action Plan. (aka Get Stuff Done days).

My message for you? Make sure you are allowing time in your schedule for what Stephen Covey calls Quadrant 2 activities – Important, But Not Urgent. Planning, organizing, creating the vision for your future. Whatever that looks like in your world.

#2 – Travel by myself.

I did a pretty big thing this year – I took a full week of vacation, out of the country, by myself.

I had people who wanted to go with me…and people who were willing to go on their own terms. I said no to both.

As a single woman, I knew I needed to get over this fear of solo travel. What would people think? Would I be safe? Could I manage the literal heavy lifting by myself?

I spent six days in a beautiful resort in the Dominican Republic. I did exactly what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. Ate when and where I wanted.

There were no other solo acts in sight. And guess what? I was perfectly okay with that.

My message for you? What’s your version of Solo Travel? Maybe it actually IS solo travel – or maybe it’s saying yes to an activity that scares you, or saying no to something or someone that no longer serves you. Maybe it’s seeking out a new position with a new company. Or starting your own business.

Calculate the risk, and if the math says to do it – jump.

#3 – Taking care of myself.

I became a card-carrying member of Medicare this year, so I embarked on a massive journey to take care of some things I had put off when I had Obamacare.

Suffice it to say, there were tears of frustration throughout. I remember thinking “how do other people who perhaps aren’t as intelligent as me, or have the mental faculties I have, navigate this? I spent hours upon hours following up with various medical specialists who had let my care slip through the cracks.

My message to you: Be your own best advocate. You can play the blame game – I admit to quite a bit of that this year – but you can also keep putting one foot in front of the other and get it done. Whatever it is for you – take care of yourself.

#4 – Doing the emotional dance.

I’m not comfortable giving much detail here, other than to say that I learned some valuable lessons this year about how to process other people’s opinions of me. How to sift through harsh feedback to determine what was valuable information for me to make changes in my life – and what was someone else’s opinion of me and truly none of my business.

My message to you: Growth is rarely comfortable. It requires dissonance and discomfort – otherwise, we wouldn’t see the need to grow.

The real skill, as I see it, is the sifting part. Not making everything someone says to you mean something in you needs to change – and also not making everything they say mean NOTHING about you.

#5 – Saying it out loud.

This one isn’t really an unusual thing to be thankful for, but I wanted to include it anyway.

Somewhere along the way this year, I started telling my clients how much I appreciated them. Not in the generic sense, but in the very specific way in which they showed up in the world, in working with me, and in terms of their willingness to grow.

I’ve told a few clients about my three client tiers: Those I’m glad to see the back of (I’m thrilled to say I’ve had very, very few of these over the years), the meaty middle of clients I’m happy to work with, and the ones who make me light up when I get to interact with them (these are the only ones I tell about my tiers).

I tell them how proud I am of their willingness to change, how brave they were to reach out to someone like me in the first place, and how intentional they have been about making the changes they wanted to make.

And guess what? They open up and tell me how important I have been to them and how much they appreciate me. That they could not have done it without me.

My message to you: Tell the people in your personal and professional life how they have impacted you. Tell them about the growth you’ve seen in them. Let them know how you feel about them. Say it out loud.

I bet you’ll hear it right back. Everybody wins.

I hope you have some type of year-end review and planning for next year coming up. An opportunity for you to review what went well and not so well in 2024 – and the changes you want to make for 2025. Then map out the specific steps you’ll take to get there, because a goal without a plan is just a wish.

Then go make 2025 full of unusual things to be thankful for!

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